Are you part of your body or is your body part of you?
 

I know this will draw humor, but im really interested in how people think about such things.
Be lengthy :)

Are you asking about this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem

Not really. I just wanted answers based on how board members thougt of the question.

The question is ambiguous and likely nonsensical.

You might start with Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. It's a dense read--dense with ideas and insight on the nature of individuality, society, and the for-lack-of-a-better-word-I'll-say religious impulse.

I read the book for a class on the "Sociology of Religion." It absolutely rocks.

Ask yourself that the next time you have to go to the bathroom. There is only one answer to that.

Both!

is there anything else (I mean something outside of the body) - or even you need to specify what do you mean by you.

The answers to this quest in this forum or any nerd forum are going to be funny and I can't wait to read them.

My body is part of me because I am the sum of more than my parts. I exist in my head therefore I am I if you were to transplant the synapses of someone elses brain into mine I cease to exist.

My body is a vehicle, and I am the driver.

My brain is the hardware; my thoughts, emotions, memories, and personality, are the software. And I am the programmer.

I own nothing. :) I have the Zen of no possessions.

My mind is fried after many, many years of tech work.
My body is broken down after many, many years of physical self-abuse in the gym, and counting.
My backside belongs to my wife after many, many years of marriage. :D

Oddly enough in the Western World languages there does not exist a single word to describe "awareness of self" until around 1700. It is that elusive a concept and it even in the present defies scientific studies although we are gaining some ground with the advent of NeuroScience. Still nobody can even explain an Evolutionary advantage to self-awareness and some of that is because much of it is either illusory or at least deceptive since much of who we are and from where our motivations arise is subconscious and our conscious minds jump through many fantastical hoops to rationalize what we cannot articulate.

It is far too simplistic to suppose that our bodies are a vehicle, we are the driver and that we program ourselves. Most of our identities, our most fundamental points of character, are firmly in place by the time we are 5 years old and a great deal if that is in place at birth via DNA. During the first 5 years we go through positive and negative reinforcement of our basic selves mostly from our parents and siblings. They have considerable to do with our programming that has a huge influence on how we program ourselves. Who moves the mover?

Here is an example I find fascinating. Studies have been made regarding the roles of Left Brain vs/ Right Brain and several accomplish this by in some manner showing different images to each eye, separated from the other, such as recently with a sort of VR goggles that have LCD screens, one for each eye, each shown separate and different images. In one case a man was shown an orange (fruit) in one eye and a clock in the other and then he was asked to draw what he perceived on paper with a box of crayons. He drew a clock.... with an orange crayon. When asked why he chose such an uncommon color for a clock his explanations were a study in jumping through hoops rationalization simply because the side of his brain that saw the orange is not where speech centers reside. Events like this should make one question just how aware we are of our own base motivations and drives and how much control do we really have? It should be obvious that while we certainly do have considerable free will and control that if we deny that much of what drives us is subconscious the battle is already lost in dealing with what is truly real.

The wiki on Consciousness is particularly good and can be found here ---- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

If you find such things fascinating and have yet to see Jill Bolte's Stroke of Insight it really is a must see and can be found here ----
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_...ht?language=en

The bottom line is that awareness and especially self-awareness while something we apparently all have and take for granted is an immensely complex subject and these days goes far beyond what Locke and Descartes could even have begun to imagine. We sleep and we are gone. We awaken only to find ourselves intact and in place. The what, why and how will likely be discussed for thousands more years. Amazing stuff!

Considering that both eyes send images to both sides of the brain, and that in normal subjects there is an intact corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres, this kind of anecdote makes no neuroanatomical sense, although it is unfortunately typical for the field.
<rant>
It is equally naive BTW to think that an fMRI showing brain activity has any more validity than any other observation of brain activity, like asking the person a question and getting an answer. When oh when will people stop trying to figure out philosophical, religious or spiritual questions with scientific data? (That's a rhetorical question.) Might as well ask the Pope about string theory as to ask Stephen Hawking about God. Or a bunch of Linux nerds about anything but Linux. Go on right ahead.
<end rant>

No offense meant, but the question reminded me of a question/answer session at the end of a Feynman lecture:

Q: When you are looking at something do you see only the light or do you see the object?

A: The question of whether or not, when you see something, you see only the light or you see the thing you're looking at, is one of those dopey philosophical things, that an ordinary person has no difficulty with. Even the most profound philosopher, sitting eating his dinner, hasn't any difficulty making out that what he looks at perhaps might be only the light from the steak, but it still implies the existence of the steak, which he is able to lift by the fork to his mouth. The philosophers that were unable to make that analysis, that idea, have fallen by the wayside through hunger.

:D

Im really loving the answers, thanks everybody :)